(upbeat music)
- [Marc] Now let's work on the inner braces.
These are totally optional, but with two young kids
who spend as much time on the table
as they do at the table,
I want this thing to be as sturdy as possible.
With the inner cleat clamped flush
with the outside cleat, I can bring in the support stock
and cut it to length.
Now keep in mind, I'm using dominoes for this connection.
Our plans assume that you don't have a domino
and you can simply cut traditional mortars
and tenon joints using techniques that were already
shown in this video.
With the special attachment for the domino,
it makes quick work of mortising the anchoring
on these really small pieces,
something I wouldn't even try to do with a router.
That's why we recommend traditional integral
mortis and tenon joints, or two dowels as an alternative.
Here, I've got the two inner cleats
clamped together with a small strip as a stop.
I'll simply plunge both mortises by lining up
the center lines.
(piano and guitar music)
Now I'll mark the mortise locations on the rail.
The inner cleats get a taper just like our legs
and outer cleats.
They also receive screw holds, a nice round over,
and some sanding.
Now we can glue the supports to the cleats.
You don't really even need clamping pressure here,
just make sure the support is perpendicular
and the shoulder is tight against the cleat
and let the glue dry.
The rail gets a nice curve on the bottom edge,
so we'll use a thin cutoff to draw it.
Clamp two blocks onto the rail near the shoulders.
Set them in from the edge about the thickness
of the bending strip.
Now play with the space so that the strip
is flush at the outside corner.
Place a mark one inch up at the center of the rail
and bend the strip to that exact point.
Now we can simply draw in the curve.
I'll work back to my line
with the oscillating spindle sander.
The final finessing is done with a flexible
sanding strip, which is nothing more
than a thin piece of plywood with sandpaper on one face.
Now the rail gets the finishing treatment.
Now it's time for those wedges.
I'm starting with an eight inch long piece
that will taper from 5/8ths of an inch on one end
to 3/8ths on the other.
Looks they're a little bit too wide.
That's better.
They should slide in easily.
Now tap both ends in until the joint is secure.
How far you trim them back is completely up to you.
I want mine to be shorter than the width
of the legs with a staggered arrangement.
I'll give the wedges some soft, rounded ends
using a round over bit.
It really doesn't take much pressure
for the wedges to do their job.
Man, that looks cool.
So now, let's move on to the tabletop.
Now really, a tabletop is just a giant panel glue-on
consisting of multiple boards,
so you're going to want to flatten them
and make sure that everything goes together
nice and clean, but normally
the jointing process on long boards like this
actually consumes a ton of thickness,
so it's really important that you find flat boards
to begin with, and that means you won't have to joint
them as much and you won't lose any more of the thickness
than you absolutely have to.
So since I have five quarter stock here,
my goal is to end up with at least an inch
in final thickness, and I should have no problem
getting there because like I said, step one
is picking out flat boards, and I did a pretty good
job at that.
So when you're at the lumber dealer, take your time.
I know they kind of give you funny looks
when you do that, but try to take your time to pick out
decent flat boards and you'll save yourself
a whole lot of headaches when you get back to the shop.
I'm not being too picky about the arrangement, here.
I'll just try to cut away as much sap wood as possible
while arranging the grain in a way that looks good
to my eye.
The boards are cut a few inches over size than length.
At my current depth setting, each board takes about
three to four passes to get one flat face,
which still leaves me well over an inch in thickness.
Now some of my edges are really out of shape,
so what's the best way to joint them?
I like to go with the smiley curve.
By focusing pressure at the center, we can start to produce
a flat reference area that eventually leads
to a nice, straight edge.
Now we can plane the boards down.
At this point, I honestly don't care what the actual
thickness is, I'll just plane the boards
until they all have a clean face.
If that ends up above or below an inch, that's okay.
And mine came in at just over an inch.
At the table saw, I'll cut the boards down
to remove any flaws.
Once trimmed up, the total width
should be a little bit over the target of 38 inches,
leaving me some room to joint the table saw and edges.
The jointer is set for the lightest cut possible
at this point.
Once again, I'll be using dominoes for alignment,
but it's a total optional step.
Biscuits, dowels, or splines would work great here, too.
You can also use nothing at all
and use some long calls to keep the glue up flat.
Back in Arizona, there would be no way
I could pull off this glue up all in one shot
without using a long-set glue like epoxy,
but in Denver, it's a little cooler
and there's a little bit more humidity right now,
so if I work quickly, I can use regular old
type on one.
As you can see, I'm not worried about getting glue
into the mortises.
Some will end up in there anyway, but I'll insert
the dominoes dry.
I really don't need their strength.
I'm just using them to keep the boards aligned
and flat across the 38-inch width.
In the interest of time, I'm only coating one edge
of each joint.
If I'm generous with the glue coverage,
it should work out just fine.
I find the parallel clamps can make a panel bow
if you don't apply at least a few
in the opposite orientation,
so I add a couple extra to the panel just for balance.
After the glue dries, mark out the overall 68-by-38
dimensions for reference.
Next, mark in one inch at each end,
then use some scrap stock or one of my favorite tools,
a drawing bow, to draw on the desired curve.
The curves are cut using the jigsaw
with a good, sharp blade.
Stay just a bit outside of your line
just in case there's some tear out or blade wandering.
The long sides are also given a curve that comes in
one inch at each corner.
I'll use a strip of scrap by clamping it in the center
flush with the edge, then clamping the outside sections
in by one inch.
(acoustic guitar music)
To refine the edge, there are a number of things
that you can do.
I like to use a rasp first to work back
to my pencil line.
Be sure to use the rasp perfectly vertical
so that you don't induce a taper.
From there, I switch to a sander.
Again, keeping the tool vertical is essential.
The sander does do a good job of not only
smoothing the edge, but making sure that there
are no high or low spots.
Once the curves are good to go,
we can sand the panel itself to remove
any glue residue from the glue up.
Now it's time to add a nice round over.
I'm using a tabletop round over bit,
which has a nice elongated profile.
And I'm actually putting this profile
on the underside of the top.
This should give the piece a lighter appearance
and adds a detail that I personally find very appealing.
(acoustic guitar music)
Now I can give the tabletop a thorough sanding,
starting with 120 grit and working my way up to 220.
You might notice that I always seem to have
pencil marks on the surface.
I use those to gauge when I'm done with the sanding
on any particular grit.
I sand the profile by hand
and make sure you sand with the grain
when working on the ends.
Now we can clip the table over
and add a small round over to the top perimeter,
just enough to break the sharpness.
And now we sand.
Before the finishing starts,
I'll lay down a blanket under the tabletop
to help prevent getting any dings or scratches
on the surface.
So at this point, I've gone over the entire project
with a little bit of 220-grit sandpaper,
just to make sure that everything is absolutely perfect,
and now we're ready to apply the finish.
Nothing crazy here, just Min Wax wipe-on poly,
Satin Formulation.
I don't really like super high gloss.
I think satin looks a little bit better.
About three to four coats is what we're going to put
on the base.
For the type, I might put an extra coat or two
because that's really the thing that's going to get
the most abuse.
I've got two kids, they're very young
and we've got a long time to live with this table,
so they're probably going to beat the crap out of it.
A little more protection would be good.
The cool thing about the base is,
everything comes apart, so none of this is glued together.
These things are so much easier to finish
if we can actually finish them flat
as opposed to surfaces like this meeting at right angles.
That makes things a little bit trickier
and the finish quality is going to be a little bit
better too, so all right.
I'm going to get a secondary container,
pour this out, and we'll start wiping on that finish.
The first coat will absorb readily,
so you don't need to be too careful about how you apply it.
Just soak the surface with a brush or rag.
(upbeat music)
After the piece is well coated,
go back and wipe off the excess with the clean rag
or paper towel.
(upbeat music)
The top is a little tricker since we can only work
one face at a time.
You could put it up on painter's pyramids,
but with a top this heavy, it's likely to dent the wood,
so I'll start with the bottoms first.
I really want to build the coats quickly here,
so I'll brush on the finish,
but I won't wipe off the excess.
After about six to eight hours, the bottom is dry enough
to flip it over and apply a coat to the other face.
All parts of the project receive two coats
with no sanding in-between.
Once the second coat is dry, it's time to sand.
The base parts are sanded by hand with 320-grit paper.
By the way, you see all that white dust?
That's exactly what you want.
If your sand paper is gumming up and you're getting
little finish balls instead of dust,
the finish just isn't cured enough.
The top is a lot more fun to sand.
I can use a 400-grit sanding pad on
my Random Orbit Sander to make the job a whole lot easier.
All this dust is bad for the finish,
so I'll vacuum up what I can with a brush attachment
on the shop vac.
Using a shop towel soaked in mineral spirits,
I'll give the parts a quick wipe down to make sure
all the dust residue is gone.
From here on out, all coats will be wiped on
using a bundle of paper shop towels.
Cotton cloth works better, but this is all I have
at the moment.
A quick tip to help save you finish
is to put some mineral spirits on the bundle
to pre-soak it.
Otherwise, it will end up soaking up a bunch of finish
that will never see the wood and essentially,
it gets wasted.
Now it's a simple matter of wiping on a consistent
and even finish.
Each pass should overlap the one before it by half.
Continue to add finish to the bundle as needed
in order to maintain a wet edge.
After the top is completely coated,
I'll go back around and coat the edges
while also making sure that we don't have any drips
that migrated to the other face.
Of course, the top will take a lot longer
than the rest of the project
because I can only coat one side at a time.
The base parts, however, can be completely coated
in one shot.
How many coats you do from here is totally up to you,
but the process is the same every time.
Personally, I like four to five coats.
After the final coat cures,
I like to finish the finish by buffing the surface
with mineral oil and mineral spirits.
The oil acts as a lubricant while the 400-grit sanding pad
gives the surface an even matte appearance
and a smoothness that's unmatched.
Of course, the sander works great on the top,
but the rest of the parts have to be done by hand.
And then clean off the oil with another rag
soaked in mineral spirits.
After the surface dries, I can buff off the haze
with a dry rag and our finish is complete.
Now for the final assembly of the base.
(acoustic guitar music)
Thanks to a suggestion to someone on Instagram
or maybe Facebook, I can't remember,
I decided not to glue in a center supports.
They can still do their job without the glue,
and now we have the added bonus of being able
to flat pack this entire table.
To attach the top to the base,
I use Wood Whisperer Thread Taps.
All we need to do is transfer the whole locations
to the underside or the top,
drill each hole about 5/8th of an inch deep,
then cut the threads with the tap.
And by the way, if you didn't hear,
we do now have thread taps available
for pre-order in metric.
(silly music)
And now we can install the bolts.
(guitar and piano music)
All right, so here it is.
When not in use, we will probably push it
until the feet contact the bench,
which actually gives us tons of space over here,
which is really, really nice.
But the real test is what it's like to get in
on that side because I know that's what Nicole
is going to be worried about.
All right, here we go.
Yeah, baby!
Really nice leg clearance.
There's nothing to hit my knees on,
didn't have to move the table out,
but I still have the table just a little bit
over the front edge of the bench
which, usually with the kids,
that's where we want it.
Mateo typically sits over here
and we have to pull it back far enough so he doesn't
kind of slip through and fall off the bench.
If we wanted to, you could still pull it back
a little bit further,
but you don't really need to.
I think there is pretty good.
And right there, we still have easy access
in and out, which is pretty sweet.
So I would say this was a success
and the only thing left to do is get it dirty and use it!
(upbeat music)
(family chatters)
(upbeat music)